As the tadpole grows in the egg, it will fill the egg and assume a C position. When the tadpole’s tail is straight again, you know it has hatched. It is now time to take the tadpole out of the petri dish. We use a turkey baster to get the tadpoles out. We then place the tadpoles individually in tadpole cups. We add 2″-3″ of Reverse Osmosis water, a piece of indian almond leaf and a small piece of Java Moss. After a day or two, we fill the cup up entirely. If you do not have a Reverse Osmosis System, we recommend that you use some of the water treatment products.

We feed my tadpoles a variety of tadpole foods. We feed once a week and NEVER do water changes.

Once the tadpole sprouts front legs, We pour out all of the water, get rid of the java moss, and add an inch or so of Reverse Osmosis water back into the cup. We then place the cup between two of the wires in the wire shelf. This creates a sloped area where the frogs can climb out. When we see a frog completely out of the water, we move the froglet into a froglet tub.

Froglets

Froglets get put into tubs in pairs. The tubs are a 128 oz container with sphagnum moss, some terrarium plants, and a film cannister. We seed all tubs with springtails so the froglets can have a variety of food. We feed all froglets every other day.

More and more people are acquiring exotic pets every year. A lot of these pets can get too large to be properly cared for by the average hobbyists and others can harbor diseases that can be passed on to humans. Still others require foods that are hard to come by, messy, or expensive. Poison Dart Frogs, on the other hand, are a great choice for an exotic pet.

Poison Dart Frogs come in all kinds of colors including blue, orange, red, black, bronze, yellow, and a host of other colors. There are poison dart frogs that reach an adult size no bigger than your thumbnail and others that are 2”-3” as adults. While bigger is always better when building a terrarium, these animals can be kept in pairs in tanks as small a 10 gallon aquarium.

While deadly in the wild, these creatures lose their toxicity in captivity due to the change in diet. In the wild these frogs get their poison from ants and beetles that eat poison plants. Without contact to these specific insects, Poison Dart Frogs lose their toxicity.

Poison Dart Frogs are fed a staple of fruit flies. The fruit flies used to feed poison dart frogs are wingless fruit flies or larger flightless fruit flies, so they are much easier to work with than one would think. When it comes to culturing fruit flies, they are far easier then other feeder insects.

Poison Dart Frogs are beautiful animals that are easy to care for, amazing to look at, and allow people the opportunity to own exotic pets with less of the drawbacks associated with other exotic pets.

Last year I traded two 2-year-old male Citronella Tincs to a guy for a pair of “blue-legged vents” he had gotten from __________(I won’t use their name and will refer to them as X). After a few months in quarantine I went to the move the frogs to their new home, but instead I found out that one of the frogs had died.

I then began my search for a mate for this frog. Not wanting to mix frogs from different lines, I contacted X (the person who supplied the frogs to the guy I traded with) to find out what line they sold to him. This person patched me to another person they had bought the frogs from. That person could not remember who they got the frogs from.

This got me thinking. Are all “blue-legged vents” from the same line? I asked the question on Dendroboard and got no response. I then posted the same question on Frognet. The only person that responded was Tor Linbo.

He responded back to my question by saying:

I have 3 types of yellow vents… these have little information on where they are from… one from Dutch breeder, years ago, … another from an animal importer that I think is gone from the hobby… another imported by a reptile breeder who thought he was getting snakes and ended up with frogs… all standard yellows like the ones in Heselhaus… one a little more metallic…

He also referred me to his site www.natures-web.org where he lists 5 different morphs of yellow vents (not including the red vents). Of those five there is two with metallic bronze legs, one with metallic green-blue legs, and two with coppery bronze legs.

Tor sent another email saying:

There are at least 2 more lines in Europe… also an “albino” line that is from Germany that may still be in the US.

Later I bought some vents (never mixed them with the odd vent I already had) from Herpetologic who said his blue vents came from:

My blue leg ventrimaculatus come from a few sources, one is zoo stock and one is a European import.

This research leaves me with a bunch of questions. What is a “blue legged vent”? What is a “gray legged vent”? How many people know which “blue legged vents” they have?